The Secret of Lost Things

by Sheridan Hay | 354 pgs, published 2007

A Tasmanian girl comes to New York and works in a huge, well-known used bookstore. Her boss is an albino with failing eyesight. There’s an under-the-table attempt to sell – maybe? – an unpublished (maybe) Herman Melville manuscript. The author spent a lot of time creating unique characters, but at some point, you need an average person in your book. Right?

The narration is fine, but then there’s this scene. It’s weird. Weird is too subtle a term for it. What’s beyond “bizarre”? The narrator is so passive, and it’s never more irritating (or bizarre) than in this one scene.

If you’re really intrigued by my vague description, I guess I could understand that. I finished the book feeling slightly creeped out, and just odd. And not really like I’d read something I enjoyed.

So…I wouldn’t recommend it, because it was “meh” at best, and why waste time on books like that?

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